It could, in other words, become the F-35 of its day. If the Air Force does try to develop a new lightweight fighter, there’s a good chance the service will end up adding so many roles and so much complexity that it, too, ends up expensive, unreliable and a mediocre performer. Expand your options of fun home activities with the largest online selection at. “Chances of that happening are 70% against it,” Grazier said, pointing to the Pentagon’s bad habit these days of packing as many competing requirements as possible into a single program. What happens next will determine whether the F-35 inspires good replacements, like the F-111 did. It’s no wonder then that Air Force leaders now admit they probably won’t be able to replace the tried-and-true F-16 with an equal number of F-35s.įor that, they say, the service either should buy fresh F-16s or launch a new program to develop an F-16-like lightweight fighter.Īll this talk of a new lightweight fighter program is, on the Air Force’s part, a tacit admission that the F-35 has failed. Complexity slows development, raises costs and worsens reliability. The competing needs have added complexity and compromise to the F-35’s design. The Marines Corps F-35B packs a heavy, downward-blasting lift jet for vertically landing on assault ships. The Navy F-35C with its bigger wing can launch from and land on aircraft carriers. The Air Force F-35A has a small wing for flying from airfields. A single basic set of systems, packed into three broadly similar airframes, is supposed to meet the needs of the Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps-not to mention foreign operators. The F-35 of course shares many of the qualities of the F-111. The failure of a multi-role, multi-service plane that didn’t work helped to inspire initially single-role, single-service planes that did work. The A-10 could fly low and slow and only low and slow. While far from perfect-the F-14 initially was under-powered-they benefited from focus. All three were single-role types at first.

The Navy developed the A-7 attack plane and the F-14 interceptor. The Air Force developed the A-10 close-air-support jet. Perhaps the greatest benefit of McNamara’s folly was that, in failing, it compelled the Air Force and Navy quickly to develop several no-nonsense new planes to perform all the roles the F-111 couldn’t perform. The unit cost ended up being five times what McNamara projected. But it was not the omni-role miracle-jet McNamara sold it as. In a long Air Force career ending in 1998, the F-111 proved to be an effective strike and electronic-warfare plane. The Air Force eventually bought around 550 F-111s strictly for long-range ground-attack missions. The Navy entirely dropped out of the program after discovering how sluggish the jet was. The Air Force peeled off the close-air-support requirement. When the first F-111 rolled out of the General Dynamics factory in Fort Worth, Texas, in 1964, McNamara hailed it as “the greatest single step forward in combat aircraft in several decades.” He expected the Air Force and Navy to buy 1,700 of the 50-ton jets.īut it soon was apparent the F-111 couldn’t do everything McNamara promised it would do.

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